a flower to pillow thy head
by Trumpet-Geek
Summary: [viktuuri] mafia au. Yuuri is taken walking out of a flower shop, of all places.


**a flower to pillow thy head**

by: tg  
summary: Yuuri is taken walking out of a flower shop, of all places.

He's just bought a bouquet of bright blue roses because they're Viktor's favorite, because he loves Viktor and he loves the way his eyes light up and his cheeks flush pink whenever Yuuri does something to surprise him. He pushes through the door and hears it chime with his exit, buries his face into the soft blue petals, and has just enough time to feel the gentle curve of a smile lift the corners of his lips before the first man is on him.

warnings: mafia au, minor violence, kidnapping

* * *

 _and when thou art weary ill find thee a bed, of mosses and flower to pillow thy head_ \- john keats

* * *

Yuuri is taken walking out of a flower shop, of all places.

He's just bought a bouquet of bright blue roses because they're Viktor's favorite, because he loves Viktor and he loves the way his eyes light up and his cheeks flush pink whenever Yuuri does something to surprise him. He pushes through the door and hears it chime with his exit, buries his face into the soft blue petals, and has just enough time to feel the gentle curve of a smile lift the corners of his lips before the first man is on him.

One moment he's thinking about which vase Viktor might like to put his flowers in, and the next he's being mercilessly choked from behind. The pressure against his windpipe and his arteries blinds him and makes him wheeze, unable to draw breath of blink away the static filling his vision. It's terrifying; no matter how many self defense lessons he's had, no matter how much he's trained his mind and body to fend off attackers – no matter how often this happens to him – being taken by surprise like this never fails to trigger a massive spike of sheer, unadulterated _panic_.

 _He's trained_ , Yuuri thinks. His brain is fuzzy white and his thoughts are sluggish and getting slower still. The man taking his is trained.

But so is Yuuri, and layered beneath the fear and confusion is adrenaline and years of honed instinct.

His hands come up automatically, pulling at the forearm crushing his throat and scratching angry, bloody welts into the skin with his nails and the rose thorns. He raises a knee and grinds his heel down the man's shin, stomping on his instep and making the man gasp shakily against the back of his ear. He writhes and bucks but the lack of blood flow and oxygen make him weak and sloppy, and the man behind him does not budge for anything.

The man starts to inch backward and Yuuri sheds the old strategy for a new one; he stops fighting back and lets his body go limp, hanging like dead weight. The man staggers a bit at the sudden extra weight. Yuuri takes his chance and ducks out of his hold, but he's gasping too hard, his vision too black to make it far. He can't take in enough air to sustain his out escape, and he's grabbed again and this time he doesn't have the energy to struggle as another man joins the first to help drag him into the alley next to the flower shop.

There are more men there waiting for him, and a car with tinted windows and no license plates.

 _Okay_ , Yuuri thinks. _Okay_.

(Mari would be so disappointed in him.)

Someone hits him hard from behind, and petals scatter as he drops the bouquet from his limp hand and onto the trash-strewn ground.

* * *

Yuuri wakes up to a world of screaming pain, but that's okay. It just means he's still alive, which is – good. Great, even. It means he can see his husband again, if he can manage to gather the wherewithal to get himself out of this mess.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks. _Fuck fuck fuck. Okay._

He has no clue how long he's been here.

He drags the fragmented pieces of his mind together long enough to take stock of himself, and isn't particularly thrilled with what he finds. His head is an aching, screeching mess, and his skin feels tight on the back of his neck, like something has dripped and dried there. His muscles are sore all over, and his arms and legs are bound both together but not to the chair he's sitting on. The restraints are scratchy and splintery like thick outdoor rope, and his skin feels rubbed raw already where he's in contact with it.

He's pretty sure he's alone, too; he strains his senses but comes up with nothing except the faint sound of voices that seem like they're coming from another room. He cracks his eyelids and the light sears him straight through for a moment, but then he's able to make out — nothing. His glasses are gone. How can he get out of this if he can't even _see_ —

For just a moment Yuuri feels himself slip sideways into panic, but in the next breath he gets himself back under control; it wouldn't do to lose even a single fraction of the tenuous grip he's got on this situation and on the sheer terror that rushes in his blood, just beneath the skin. He's been in worse situations and got himself out of them; he's felt worse panic and got himself out of that, too.

He misses Viktor so much.

He breathes as evenly as possible, slow like he's still asleep even though his chest is aching for oxygen, and tests the rope in small, increment movements, not quite ready to alert his captors to his wakefulness, and – _yes_ , there, just enough give to slide his wrists out, if he can remember how to quietly dislocate his thumb. Perfect. It's going to hurt, but what's a little more pain?

The thought is centering, settling, and the panic drains out of him almost as quickly as it came now that he's grasped onto something that will _help_. There's little point in waiting, especially since he doesn't know how long he's going to be left alone like this, so he wraps his thumb up in his fingers and jerks, hard. The icy pain of it is a bright burst behind his closed eyelids, sharp enough to dull out the rest of it like a firework to the night sky, and he bites his lip hard to keep the gasp contained, to keep himself _quiet_.

It doesn't quite work; a small, wounded sound escapes, and suddenly every muscle in his body is tense, waiting. He strains, but can't hear anything except for the sound of his own breathing and the distant echo of footsteps, which are getting closer.

God, he's so rusty at this.

He spares a moment to send up a prayer that whoever is out there isn't drawn in because of his error, and immediately lets his body grow heavy and limp. He just manages to get his breathing and facial expressions regulated when a door bursts open and several people walk in.

"Oh," someone says loudly. Yuuri has to work not to flinch at the sound. "I guess he's still asleep."

"That's fine," someone else replies. His voice is quieter, smoother, oilier. Commanding. "Let him sleep, we can still convince Nikiforov to give us the information this way. We can even pretend he's dead. Though it'd be better if Nikiforov can hear him beg."

"But why would the Pakhan care if his bodyguard lives or dies?"

Bodyguard? Yuuri wonders if maybe he should be insulted that these thugs think he's Viktor's _bodyguard_ ; instead he just feels tired and hangry. He wonders if Viktor would like pierogies for dinner. He's content to wait and find out where they're going with this, but one of the men — who is evidently much closer than Yuuri thought he was, what the hell — _threads his grubby hands into Yuuri's hair and pulls_. The motion exposes his naked throat and his charade all at the same time, and the irritation and fear simmering under his skin explode out of him in a wild snarl.

"Well, he's awake now," the first man says, looking down at him with amusement. "Aren't you, kid?"

Yuuri rolls his eyes, and the man shakes him just a little bit in retaliation.

He can escape at any time. He can. But he's kind of curious now. He really wants to know what reason they have to keep him from his dinner date with Vitya.

"Go ahead," he says, his voice rough. "You're going to regret it."

The men laugh, and Yuuri grits his teeth and tells himself to have some patience. It'll be over with soon. One of them digs up a phone — _Yuuri's_ phone, he can tell by the blue poodle case, which is almost absurd enough to make him laugh. He makes a show out of dialing Viktor's number, which really _does_ make him laugh; the man holding him shakes him a little too vigorously, and the pain in his head flares hot again in reaction.

"Get _off_ — "

"Hello? Yuuri? Sweetheart, where — "

Yuuri's heartbeat speeds up beneath his ribs, a conditioned response to the sound of his husband's beautiful voice. God, he sounds —

Scared. Small. Anxious.

Desperate.

Yuuri has only seen Viktor scared a handful of times, one of which was the immediate aftermath of the Dog Park Incident, during which Yuuri got distracted by accident because he kept finding dogs to pet and ended up staying out for hours longer than he'd meant to, and his Pakhan husband had sent out all available resources to find him because Viktor doesn't know how to use his Find My Iphone app.

"Yuuri? Please — "

Yuuri wants to reach out and sooth the fear away, but he can't because he's here.

"Hello Mister Nikiforov, Yuuri can't come to the phone right now, but if you're willing to give us a few morsels of information he might suddenly become available to speak."

"What have you done with Yuuri?!"

He's hurting Viktor.

"Oh, nothing. Yet."

 _He's hurting Viktor._

"Don't you dare lay a hand on him —!"

Yuuri loves Viktor so much he doesn't know what to do with himself sometimes.

"Too late."

Game over.

The man holding him must've seen the motion of the rope coiling to the ground, because the firm fingers in his hair slacken and he makes a noise of shock. His face curls into a snarl and he takes a step after Yuuri, but it's not enough to stop him — nothing is enough to stop Yuuri now.

Yuuri picks up speed in the half-dozen or so steps between him and the man holding the phone and slams into him hard enough to make it fall from his gnarled fingers. The phone smacks onto the ground and skitters, and Viktor's voice is frantic and fearful through the speakers but Yuuri pays it no mind as he goes down with the man who dared use him against his husband. They grapple for a moment, the man twisting like a cat beneath him to get the leverage to fight him off, but Yuuri is a scrapper when he needs to be, and much stronger than he looks. He pins the man down with a forearm across his throat, but the man presses cruel fingers hard into his mangled thumb and Yuuri rips off of him with a wild cry.

"Fuck fuck — "

A boot connects with Yuuri's shoulder, sending ripples of pain down his arm and across his upper back. He grunts and rolls with it, just managing to dodge a second blow. The third blow he catches between his hands with a grunt of pain at the shock to his thumb, twisting hard and pulling him off balance enough to send him crashing to the floor. He dispatches this one with the heel of his palm to his forehead, and the man's scrabbling hands fall limp to his sides.

The first man is still gasping for breath from nearly having his throat crushed, so the man who'd held him by the hair comes at him next with a cry and a wild haymaker of a punch that Yuuri easily rolls away from. He gets onto his feet and drops low, dodging a sweeping roundhouse. He staggers for a moment, cursing the pins and needles in his legs, and cries out as the man manages a vicious uppercut that catches Yuuri by surprise. He bites his tongue on accident as he goes down, and the blood in his mouth is viscous and disgusting. He spits it out, unwilling to swallow it down, and groans brokenly into the floorboards.

"Yuuri?!"

Viktor's voice. The phone is still on.

Fuck.

Movement out of the corner of his eye has him lifting his head, but it's too late; the first man, the one Yuuri had left gasping on the floor, charges at him, falling to the floor with his knees on either side of Yuuri's hips. Yuuri's head hits the floor with a force that stuns him, and he moans at the pain of it. Before he can move a heavy weight settles on his chest and a hand wraps around his slender neck to squeeze. The other man laughs at him, and Yuuri lashes out with his foot, kicking him in the kneecap and sending him screaming to the floor with a sickening crunch.

Almost like an afterthought.

Two down.

"Shit, you —"

The man doesn't get to finish whatever it was he'd planned to say. Yuuri boxes him in both ears, groaning when his thumb slides back into place with a nasty pop. He slams his good one into the soft point of his temple and grins as he folds up like a puppet with its strings cut. Yuuri shoves the limp body off of him and lies there for a long moment, panting and feeling the scrape of oxygen in his throat with each breath.

He rolls over and struggles up onto his hands and knees, and then further, his joints creaking like an old chair. One man is still conscious — the one whose knee he'd blown out — so he drags his tired body over to him and dispatches him with a sharp kick to the head.

"I'm not a fucking bodyguard," he tells the unconscious body at his feet. "I'm _Yakuza_."

He picks up the discarded phone on the way out, noticing that Viktor still hadn't hung up. Loving warmth blooms underneath the bruises and cuts, and he brings it up to his ear to hear Viktor's distance voice issuing commands which —

Brings about a warmth of another kind, but this is neither the time nor the place.

"Viktor?"

He hears the hitch of Viktor's breath from kilometers away, made intimate and close through the phone's speaker, and sinks into the sound of his husband's voice. "Yuuri? Yuuri, love, please _please_ tell me you're okay, god I'm so worried, please —"

"Viktor, Vitya — I'm _fine_. I'm okay, _anata_ , of course I'm okay, I'm fine," he says.

"You're okay," Viktor says, uncertainly, like he's trying to get a taste for the words in his mouth. "You're okay. I — should probably call them off."

"Who?" Yuuri murmurs, but he finds, as he steps over the strewn bodies and walks outside, that he doesn't need Viktor to answer.

No less than ten armored cars and forty people with a full arsenal of weaponry greet him as he steps out into the night.

Yuuri laughs, and clutches the phone tighter to his face, so in love with Viktor that he feels overwhelmed and weak with it. He imagines the way Viktor will look at him when he's delivered back home, with such gentle fondness and love that Yuuri will be able to feel it swell beneath his own ribs; he imagines the sweet way Viktor will lay his fingertips to all of Yuuri's cuts and bruises and the even sweeter way he will press his lips to them, as though his kiss can erase the marks left on him from hatred and anger.

He knows Viktor knows he can take care of himself, but the fact is he doesn't have to anymore, and he probably never did in the first place.

"I'll see you soon, Vitya," Yuuri says and hangs up as he lets Viktor's men lead him into one of the cars, and as they pull out into the growing Saint Petersburg night, he makes one request.

"Take me to the flower shop, please. I need to buy some roses for my husband."


End file.
